I went through many online documents for the checkbox input in XHTML. Can anyone clear my doubt? What does this name field actually stand for?
Milk: <input type="checkbox" name="checkbox" value="Milk">
Chocolate: <input type="checkbox" name="checkbox" value="chocolate">
Cold Drink: <input type="checkbox" name="checkbox" value="Cold Drink">
I thought it was an identifier for that particular checkbox, which can later be used in other file by just referring their name, but given that all the checkbox had same name, why even specify it? A little confused of this.
Dont be confused because of name="checkbox". It could more logically be name="drink" and type=checkbox.
In the above case, you have multiple checkboxes with the same name. When several checkboxes have the same name, the form will send a group of values to the server in the request. Note: only the values of the checked checkboxes will be sent to the server.
Ideally these are used to allow multiple choice questions where more than one answer is allowed. As opposed to radio buttons, where only one answer is allowed among the options.
Update:
On the receiving side, if you're using JSP for example - the values of the selected checkboxes will be available as request.getParameterValues("drink") or request.getParameterValues("checkbox") in your actual case. This is where the name attribute is used.